High volume, finished production of documents is typically referred to as production printing. A production printer is a printing device capable of rapid production of large volumes of documents. Typically these printers have high paper handling capacity, the ability to draw on multiple media types from multiple sources and the ability to automatically finish a document such as by adding a binding. Despite the automation provided by the production printer and the proliferation of computer technology, especially in the area of desktop publishing, production printing is still a complicated and often manual process.
Production printing also involves other complicated processes, which affect the production efficiency. For example, in print shops that handle jobs electronically, job submission requires entering the job into the shops electronic production system. For documents that are brought in by the customer as hard copy, the documents must first be scanned electronically into the shop""s computer system. Such documents are usually scanned using a production scanner. Further details of the workflow for production printing are described in co-pending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/573,113 entitled xe2x80x9cAutomated Job Creation For Job Preparationxe2x80x9d, filed concurrently herewith, which is incorporated herein by reference.
In the normal scan operation for production scanning, a large stack of originals is placed in an input hopper of a production scanner device. The operator then sets a few attributes for the scanner, which defines the nature of the stack of originals, and then activates a start button. The scan is complete when the last sheet is scanned in.
In some cases it is important to take extra care with a few of the pages in the original stack because they contain photograph or image content that should be scanned in with special attributes set. The scanning of these pages usually takes multiple attempts in order to xe2x80x9ctweak inxe2x80x9d the attributes to obtain the ultimate image quality from these special pages. To support the multiple attempts, scanners will perform multiple scans of the same sheet. However, the sheet may have to be manually placed on the platen for the multiple scans, thus disturbing the original large stack. Alternatively, if the scanner does not have a platen, but only a stream scan device, the sheet must be manually moved back from the output hopper to the input hooper for a subsequent scan.
Also, when there is a complex page of data, for example containing some text, some graphics and a photograph, the operator needs to apply a different scanning algorithm to each of these. Different scanning algorithms are better suited for different tasks. For example, one algorithm may be better suited for scanning text and anther algorithm may be better suite for scanning graphics. This makes an already difficult task of obtaining optimum image quality for a page all of one image type exponentially more difficult.
Some prior art systems have been developed that use different algorithms for different tasks. For example, some available systems attempt to provide these capabilities in software. A software system, however will result in slow production. Further, the software is not tuned for the specific scanner or printer to be used in the process. Another available system sold by Kofax, Inc. is a system called xe2x80x9cVirtualReScanxe2x80x9d. This system attempts to address the software problem by using an external board containing the various algorithms. This system, however, also has the disadvantage that the algorithms on the board are not tuned to a specific scanner or to a printer.
Therefore, it is desirable to provide a scanner with interactive capabilities for scanning documents containing complex page data.
A method and system are provided for scanning a page having different image attributes on different zones of the page. The method and system use a scanner having a resident image buffer and scanning circuitry including a plurality of scanning algorithms having optimum rendering characteristics for imaging images with a plurality of different image attributes. The scanner scans the page and an image of the page is provided on a display. The operator uses an input device to designate a zone of the page on the display. The data from the scanned page is stored in a buffer resident on the scanner prior to rendering of the data. The operator also designates a selected one of said algorithms to be applied to the designated zone. The scanner applies the designated algorithm to the data stored in said resident image buffer for the designated zone. The scanner renders an image of the data stored in the resident image buffer.